Posts Tagged ‘open letter’

Last month we wrote an open letter to Andrew Stoner, NSW Minister for Trade and Investment, to urge him to continue the NSW Interactive Media Fund through another round of committed grant funding. Yesterday we received a reply from Mr Stoner. What do you think? Is this a promising step in the right direction or just some political wordsmithing?

If you took up our rallying call and sent an email to Mr Stoner, thanks for the support. We believe a fund of this nature is really important for the local games industry. Time will tell if our politicians agree. (more…)

The Interactive Media Fund is a grant-based fund, administered by Screen NSW, to help grow the interactive media industry in New South Wales through supporting the creation of new interactive digital content. The fund, initially called the Digital Media Initiative, was launched in December 2010 and committed to providing $1.5m per year over a 3 year period to develop the digital media industry in NSW, of which video games is a key component. Since launch the fund has provided grant income to a number of small video game companies, including ourselves. This, we believe, has helped grow the video game industry across NSW. The initial 3 year commitment comes to an end in June this year and continuation of the fund is currently under review.

We believe that a fund of this nature is vital to foster the development of the local video games industry and urge Andrew Stoner MP, NSW Minister for Trade and Investment, to continue the legacy of this important fund through another round of committed grant funding. Nic has written an open letter to him which is shown below.

If you live in NSW and share our view that this vital fund should continue, please write to Mr Stoner at office@deputypremier.nsw.gov.au. We have provided an email template here. Feel free to use this template in its entirety or to change it to suit your circumstances. It is really important that Mr Stoner hears our views during this review period. Help us persuade Mr Stoner of the importance of this initiative and together we can continue to grow the burgeoning video game industry in NSW. (more…)

I am writing to ask that you introduce a cheaper classification system for downloadable software in Australia. As a developer of downloadable games for Nintendo Wii (WiiWare) and Nintendo DSi (DSiWare) your current costs ($1150 or $2040 per rating) are very high in comparison with other regions across the world when compared on a population basis (your charges are viewable to the public and available here: http://www.classification.gov.au/special.html?n=293&p=84).

As you can appreciate Australia is a much smaller market than Europe and America however your cost based on population is much much higher. This means that although we are an Australian based developer it is very hard to justify releasing our games in this country. By comparison USA (ESRB) and EU (PEGI) cost less with populations of 300 million and 400 million respectively (actual costs are not available to the public so have been removed). In this light Australia’s $1150 against a population of 21 million makes it 13 to 21 times more expensive on a per head of population basis while the $2040 charge is 26 to 42 times more expensive.

This means from a small developers perspective that the risk of return in Australia is approaching a prohibitively high amount. Big retail games which come on disc and cost $80 – $120 do not really suffer the same issues as they cost, on average, well over $1 million so an extra $1,000 or $2,000 is not as significant. Most WiiWare and DSiWare titles will cost about $100,000 or even less. As you can see the cost of getting a downloadable game rated in Australia adds at least 1-2% of the development cost to the game.

By having costs as you currently do you are restricting the market of great software to Australians in comparison to that which is already available in other territories. This as you can appreciate creates a barrier to free trade and reduces consumer choice. I would like to suggest that you consider introducing a cheaper classification process for cheaper/smaller downloadable games in the same way as the ESRB and PEGI have done. This will allow small developers to continue to create and sell their software to all the great Australian WiiWare and DSiWare fans.